2016 OER Africa Convening
Key Note Speakers
Prof Ahmed Cassim Bawais a theoretical physicist. He currently serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Universities South Africa. Most of his professional life, which included a term as Programme Officer at the Ford Foundation, has been dedicated to the university sector.
Professor Bawa, who has been Vice-Chancellor and principal of the Durban University of Technology has previously held the position of Deputy Vice-Chancellor at both the University of Natal and the University of KwaZulu-Natal.Until August 2010 he was a faculty member of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Hunter College and a member of the doctoral faculty at the Graduate Center, City University of New York.
Professor Bawa has served on science, technology, and higher education policy teams, and was an inaugural member of the National Advisory Council on Innovation. He is a fellow of both the Royal Society of South Africa and the Academy of Science of South Africa. He has been board chair of the Foundation for Research Development, and vice-chair of the Atomic Energy Corporation.
Prof Pieter du Toit is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Pretoria. He has been a guest lecturer at Iowa State University, the University of Oklahoma and the University of Antwerp, where he also held a postdoctoral fellowship. His research activities include action research, learning styles (specifically whole brain learning), professional development and education innovation across faculties.
He has served as Vice-president of the South African Association for Research and Development in Higher Education (SAARDHE); as a member of the executive committee of the Higher Education Learning and Teaching Association of Southern Africa (HELTASA); and the executive committee of the Action Learning Action Research and Process Management Association Australia.
A registered Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI) practitioner with Ned Herrmann International which informs his research on whole brain learning, Prof. du Toit has published widely on teaching and learning in higher education and also served as editor of established peer-reviewed journals. His work has been recognised with an award for excellence in education innovation from the Department of Education Innovation at the University of Pretoria.
Dr. David Wiley is Chief Academic Officer of Lumen Learning, an organization dedicated to increasing student success, reinvigorating pedagogy, and improving the affordability of education through the adoption of open educational resources (OER) by schools, community and state colleges, and universities. He is also currently the Education Fellow at Creative Commons and adjunct faculty in Brigham Young University's graduate program in Instructional Psychology and Technology, where he leads the Open Education Group (and was previously a tenured Associate Professor).
As an academic, Dr. Wiley has received numerous recognitions for his work, including a National Science Foundation CAREER grant and appointments as a Nonresident Fellow in the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, a Peery Social Entrepreneurship Research Fellow in the BYU Marriott School of Business, and a Shuttleworth Fellow. As a social entrepreneur, Dr. Wiley has founded or co-founded numerous entities including Lumen Learning, Degreed, and the Open High School of Utah (now Mountain Heights Academy). In 2009, Fast Company named Dr. Wiley one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business.
David was born and grew up in West Virginia. He is an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons). He served a two-year mission for the church in Fukuoka, Japan, and now serves as bishop of a congregation of freshmen at Brigham Young University. David lives in Utah with his wife and five children and enjoys hiking, running, playing basketball, listening to and making music, and reading.